EMPOWERED

CHAPTER 24Happiness

This chapter may seem an odd topic. You may be thinking that it's not the manager's job to be responsible for her team's happiness.

However, pretty much anyone that's worked in tech for any amount of time knows that a manager can easily be responsible for a product person being miserable. That old saying about people joining a company but leaving a manager is unfortunately demonstrated every day.

It's true that I don't usually refer to this topic as “coaching happiness.” However, I do emphasize how important it is that the manager focus at least weekly on whether each of her product people feels she is doing meaningful work, progressing in her career, and building the necessary relationships with her team and with the execs that enable her to effectively and successfully lead an empowered product team.

With the big caveat that everyone is different and what's most important is that you as manager get to know your people well enough that you understand what is meaningful to them, and what makes them happy, I have found there are some near‐universal truths to coaching happiness.

Meaningful Work

Most people in the product world want their work to be meaningful.

In fact, unless the manager is bad—in which case that dominates—in my experience this is usually the largest factor in happiness, even more than compensation.

But it's not always clear to the product person how or why her work is meaningful, or how her one small team contributes in a meaningful way. ...